An aged storm-trooper was dozing by gate 21-B4 of the Imperial Palace. If he was dozing, it didn't matter. No one ever came this was to see him. His job was useless, and he guarded nothing. Imperial finance kept him employed because one extra trooper gave their accountants a round number to deal with. "You give us much nicer numbers," he had been told, and the storm-trooper was really too tired to care.
It wasn't tired really, he had once reflected. More that he was – weary. That was it. Remembering made him weary. There were lots of things he felt were important to remember. Every once in a while, he'd tell them to someone.
Remember. It was getting hard to do these days. Sometimes names, dates, words got mixed up. He thought he usually had them straight. Not that it seemed to matter. The more self-righteous would tell him he spoke treason when he told his stories. The others just laughed.
"You server under a Jedi General! No, no let him go on, this is funny. Stars, he's better than Jal'ra's stand-up routine! General Kenobi, the fairy-tale General himself called you – what was it again – Doky?"
"Cody. My name."
"And you were what – a lieutenant?"
"A commander. Clone troopers didn't have names, you know. I was a number. I am now a number. I only had a name – "
"In the 'Clone Wars'." The new recruit, moving his fingers to denote asterisks.
"Yes, and – "
"Oh, leave him alone, Paul. The old man is obviously dotty."
A snicker. "Yeah. I've never heard such a skewered version of history. A republic! A democratic republic! As if that could ever happen."
He hadn't told anyone any stories lately.
He would simply sleep his shift away, dreaming, sometimes, of better days. Wishing, often, that he had been capable of thought such as this, when he younger. That he had not so blindly followed orders.
One order in particular.
Commander Cody, execute Order 66.
And the greatest man he'd ever known had died.
Sometimes, he would think that General Kenobi could get people to listen to his stories. People had always listened to him; he wasn't called The Negotiator for nothing. But then, he would think, if General Kenobi were here, there would be no need to tell the stories the history books were forbidden from telling. Because it wouldn't have happened that way, all those years ago. Because General Kenobi would have stopped the first Emperor – Palpatine – from making the Empire in the first place.
The trooper once known as Commander Cody had heard, a couple times, of a group of people who thought like him. The Rebel Alliance. But he did not join them. They were all but forgotten now, destroyed by the current Emperor, whom, it was whispered, had once been a soldier in their ranks. The Commander sometimes wondered if something would have been different, if he had helped them. Though when he was being reasonable, he knew that the only thing that would be different would be that gate 21-4B in the Imperial palace would have a different guard, and he'd be dead.
In his dream, now, he was sitting at his post, and, strangely, there was someone there. Not just someone. General Kenobi, looking exactly as he had thirty-nine years ago when he had died. They were talking, as they had never really done in real life. About anything, everything. There hadn't been time for talk like that during the Clone Wars, though many had desperately needed it.
There was a lull in their talk.
"You don't like your job here, do you, Cody," said the General, suddenly.
"I don't see as much action as I did serving under you, Boss," said the Commander. Certainly, if he were bored, he would never complain to the General, whom he had betrayed. But the General smiled knowingly anyway.
"Whether you were bored or not wasn't really what I was asking, you know." The General smiled at him. "I could find you another post, you know. If you were interested, of course."
If this were real, Cody would have said: 'What shall I tell my superiors? Shall the Empire just let one of their slaves go?' But this was just a dream. And there was really nothing he wanted more for himself. Cody grinned.
"I'm very interested, sir."
"Wonderful," said the Master Jedi in front of him, standing up. "Come with me, I'll take you there."
Commander Cody never woke up. Behind him, at the unused gate, a storm trooper's armour sat on a chair, hollow. Empty.